Live Without
by intallah
Summary: Kakuzu-there were too many deaths.


_The characters are, for the most part, property of Kishimoto Masashi and do not belong to me._

_Kakuzu, Konan, OC, Ino._

_This story contains mild sexuality, gore, violence and mature themes._

_I do not seek to tell the whole story. Only the good parts._

**Live Without**

_a love story_

(introduction: on death)

Kakuzu has seen hundreds-_thousands_, if you count the faceless ones-die. He knows the different ways people fall, they are catalogued into his head, an encyclopedia of violence and grief. There is the girl who dies before she can taste the lips of another, the man who dies because he cannot forget. There are the violent deaths, the brutal ones, dismembered on the road, bodies splayed and broken, and the scent of carnage thick like fog in the air. There are the deaths that pass inauspiciously, the gentle deaths, the ones whose time had come. There are deaths that leave behind broken hearts and deaths that leave no legacy, passing unnoticed in empty homes and deserted streets. There are deaths that happen with a scream, deaths that happen with a gasp and deaths that are silent, muffled in the noise from the living. There are the deaths that Kakuzu remembers, but more that he does not.

Still, he remembers too many. His mother died silently; her skin had faded to translucence and her body to bones. She was nothing but a blur in a bright kimono, beautiful and fleeting. She disappeared into her bed when it was so dark that she glowed like a ghost, and the sewing needle dropped from her bloodless fingers, head falling back onto the pillow without a sound.

His lover died with a scream, her limbs hacked apart and perfect face distorted with pain. He delivered the final blow himself, because her screams and gasps tore his heart (he only had on at the time and he had given it to her) apart. But his hands were already stained with her blood, and she had died with his heart.

His partners died before they knew it. He tore their hearts apart, bursting the organs that were far too delicate. He saw his hearts as hard and lacquered, protected and indestructible. They had died with a gasp, faces shocked and white, blood bursting from between lips that were rapidly losing colour. Kakuzu had decided long ago that killing was not an art; it was an abomination, but one he was happy to perform, most of the time, especially when it yielded money, something unmoving that was an unquestionable advantage. Morality had no place in the realm of finances.

(beginning)

Her name was Aimi and she was beautiful like a child is, all pink cheeks and long, white limbs and a smile that never dimmed. She was only a couple years younger, but with her he always felt entirely too large, as if he could break her, hurt her. She loved him completely, without expecting anything, _Kuzu-kun!_ she called him, and later just Kuzu in her voice that reminded him of summer and sweet kisses.

For all her little girl good looks she was deadly with weapons, and he never forgot the incongruously sweet smile that crossed her face whenever she made a kill, the way she laughed when her victim crumpled to the ground, blood blooming from small, neat wounds. "Isn't it perfect?" She would say, looking fair as the sun with her face flushed and her hands cut and bloodied. "Look at that," as if killing was an art. He loved her for it, he loved the tidy entry wounds she made, the vibrant exit wounds, as her blades slid through her victim's body with the grace of a dancer. He loved her smile, fresh as a flower as she took other people's lives, other people who were not as lucky as they were.

He had heard her father remind her sometimes, a harsh, frightened pang to his voice, "Aimi, take it _seriously_, we are in middle of a war," and she would giggle and say, oh, papa, how could I not take it seriously? It is they who are not! They keep dying by the sword of a little girl! And even her hard-hearted father would smile and pinch her cheek, pressing a kiss to the smooth, flawless skin.

She was the one who said it first, unabashed, her hair down around her bare shoulder and her eyes hazy, lips red from kissing, "I love you," she whispered to him and he kissed her little neck, ran his tongue up her white, perfect throat.

"I love you," he murmured and she had laughed and took him into her arms, and back then he was whole, back then his skin was as flawless as his little ivory goddess. He was untainted, his back smooth and muscled, his skin dark and undamaged, his mouth mobile and pliant under her lively lips. The only stitches on his body were the ones binding his forearms to elbow, just below the joint-the beginning of his powers.

The threads that snaked out from the stitches fascinated her, his little lover. He caressed her with them, let them slither around her shoulders, across her lips and eyelids, over her breasts and belly, making her arch her back and sigh his name. He longed for her every moment, whispering her name to himself when she was not there, _Aimi, Aimi…_

"Let me marry her," he said to her father, "I am a powerful shinobi, we will raise a strong family." But her father shook his head and said,

"Powerful, yes, but penniless also. No matter how many missions you take on, you still bear the burden of accidental poverty. I see how much she loves you, enough for me not to trust you." He told Kakuzu to come back in a month, if he still desired his daughter's hand. "Then I can see if you are truly worthy."

Kakuzu left with anger on his mind, thoughts of the old man's pompousness, his self-importance. _As if money is everything! As if money is worth more than love, and a safe home! As if it is worth more than his own daughter!_ He clenched his fists, thread weaving restlessly through his fingers.

Aimi only kissed his knuckles where the threads had cut into him and told him to wait, then. "It will only be a month, and you still have me," she whispered sweetly, her face pointed and angelic under the dappled light of night-time on Kakuzu's ceiling, "My father is a silly man, caught up in the old ways." And she propped herself over Kakuzu and kissed him until he forgot all about the stuck-up old man and filled his head only with the daughter.

Half a month, 15 days, felt like an eternity. Kakuzu had always been a little romantic and he wanted the wedding and the baby. He wanted to see his Aimi in her ornate kimono, her white neck and the crescent of her collarbone disappearing into a scarlet collar, gold sparkling around her neck with flowers in her long-fingered, ruthless hands. He wanted to see her swell with his child, her face flushed and body round and languid, lips plump and kissable.

But he didn't get that. Perhaps it was all the lives he had taken, all the families he had already ripped apart. More likely it was all the lives _she_ had taken, the victims she had left on the ground, cold carrion, or in the faithless dissection lab, their faces covered and their bodies made distinct by gruesome scars. Perhaps it was fate, taking vengeance on an age-old grievance. Perhaps they were just unlucky, born under a bad sign.

The forest felt arid and unfamiliar to him that day, the ground unchanging under his feet and the trees bowing as if in reverence, or sadness. He heard them probably before they saw him; a rustle in the bushed, the fall of what he had thought was an untrained foot. But he was wrong, for the foot was far from untrained, only uncaring.

He whirled and found himself face to face with another one of _those_ villains. He hated them; with their soliloquies face paint, their robes and deferential reasons for having to kill. But this one was different, because unconscious in the arms of this mediocre, character-playing villain was Aimi, her face white and empty, head flung back and her pretty white neck displayed proudly as if it was part of something dead.

"Its too bad," the man hissed, "That she's so weak against genjutsu." And Aimi stirred in his arms and soon the man gasped as thousands of threads yanked him to the ground, his prize tumbling out in front of him.

The man was strong; it was a struggle and soon Kakuzu was fixated, his opponent was the only other one there. The man shot powerful darts of chakra from his hands, but Kakuzu was careful not to look him in the eye.

"Now!" The word plunged forth from the pale man's painted lips and Kakuzu ignored it, a choked gasp split across his ear, his lover's mouth gaping from shock.

There were two masked men holding Aimi down with a kunai at her throat and she was awake, her eyes scanning the forest fearfully. Kakuzu must have said something then, and he must have meant for his words to hit his opponent harshly, for at that moment he met the man's eyes.

He could not move. He could still see and smell and feel, but he could not move a muscle. His arms slumped to his side and he sunk to his knees and then froze there, as if held by an invisible string.

"What do you think now, Kakuzu-san?" the man said sourly, "You're not so good in the face of genjutsu either, eh?"

Kakuzu lurched and an expression of vague anxiety crossed his captor's face. He spoke quickly, "Give us a ransom, or she will suffer!" Illustrating his tired point one of Aimi's captors drew the kunai across her neck. Aimi screamed with pain, tears falling down her white, cheeks and Kakuzu clenched his teeth, lurching forward. But his opponent only met his eyes once more and Kakuzu was forced down with a grunt.

"Money?" He leered and his men sliced at Aimi's arms. She cried out and Kakuzu felt tears rush to his eyes.

"Let me go to her father! I have no money with me! Let me go to my home, I will give you everything you need! Do not harm her!" He was begging and he didn't care, because the fear was ripe and hot in her eyes, her lips damp and shaking.

"You have money?" The man's eyes narrowed, "you have gold? Treasure?" Kakuzu nodded wildly and the man only bared his teeth. "You lie," he hissed and the two men holding down Aimi's delicate, struggling form smiled bitterly, one of them raising his hand almost theatrically slowly. Kakuzu screamed through clenched teeth and collapsed to the ground with another jolt of the genjutsu at the same time that a terrifying, wrenching scream wrought the air.

"Aimi!" He cried, and he could hear her sobs and gasps, her curses and moans. He could smell her blood on the air, the scent jarring and unfamiliar. He heard her stammering, heard her voice move over the syllables of his name, her attempt to call him back. But he could not move, his arms were stiff at his side and he shook as he tried to wrench his body into mobility. He heard the sickly snap of bones, the sound of a kunai sinking into soft, tense skin and again and again the air was rent with screams and wails.

Kakuzu, weak as he was, could do nothing but shut his eyes against the helplessness, the sound of his perfect lover's little body being maimed by hateful, vicious hands. His roars disappeared in the haze that Aimi's cries produced around his head. All was dark now, pain coursing through his limbs as he struggled against the genjutsu and the smell of her blood all around him.

After what felt like an eternity but was probably only a few torturous seconds, Kakuzu felt the terrible power release his limbs and he sprung to his feet, Aimi's cries pitiful and chilling.

"Watch her die," the mysterious villain hissed and before Kakuzu could turn around and see the damage done to his heart, his very being the man disappeared, fading into the forest that had acquired a morbid, terrifying edge.

They were alone, her so delirious that she had forgotten his name in the face of her pain, the scent of her own blood. Her lips moved over empty words, choking and gasping. Kakuzu turned and tears sprang to his eyes as the bile rose in his throat and he fell to his knees next to her battered body.

Her face was sliced down her cheek, bruised and bleeding so profusely that it obscured her features, and made the mask of pain all the more gruesome. Her right arm was so severely cut into at the joint that it seemed to be barely attached and her bloodied chest heaved with ever breath. There were two kunai embedded into her leg and Kakuzu bitterly pulled them out, her terrifying screams slicing through the air once more. He bent to her face, kissing her slick cheeks and whispering her name as she shook and roiled in agony.

Her eyes were clouded with panic and pain, he knew that as a shinobi she had been trained to have a high tolerance for pain and at this moment he wished it was not so, wished that she could simply fade into oblivion, lifted from this torment. But she twitched and gasped, her throat hoarse with screaming and he said her name over and over, tears hot on his cheeks, diluting her blood.

She shuddered and moaned, eyes sliding out of focus and her breath hitched as he pulled her into his arms, face distorting with agony as her arm slumped limply against him, soaking him with blood through to his skin. And he wept into her hair, the hair that was matted and stank of blood and dirt, with a hint of the ashes that always permeated her household, the ashes she had always smelled a little bit like. He knew she would die, for he saw the gaping stomach wound, the cracked femur and the arcing wound across her chest, over her small, exposed breasts.

She screamed as he tried to move her and he halted his motion, holding her tightly to him and trying to shut out her gasps, trying to remember her, strong as she had been.

He couldn't, for she was gone, her spirit jailed and tormented, her lips split and empty. He found her jugular vein quickly, how many times had he laid his lips to that spot? How many times had he kissed it reverently, run his fingers over her pretty white neck, tickled her with threads, smiling indulgently as she squirmed and giggled under his caress?

He cut cleanly, and then he wept as she fell apart in his arms, empty and silent.

(middle)

He _truly_ cared for Konan, because she reminded him of a child and a mother at the same time, quiet and grave, her face fake and ageless. He asked her to show him her jutsu one day and the beauty caught his attention, the quiet rustle of paper, the fleeting moment of indescribable fear as rice paper trinkets enveloped him, pulling him into a startling, ethereal whirl of whiteness. The inhumanness of it, the translucence of her skin in the moment before her face was obscured by her venomous flurry.

She never told him that she loved him, and he never thought that she did. But she was a peculiar person, all formalities and a detached sort of cynicism-_you_ will die, but I am immortal, I am complete. Her smile, rarely seen, was surprisingly girlish and innocent, and her laugh was gentle and lilting and soothing. But when she scowled her face hardened in polished, inhuman ivory, her lips an angry bloom on the whiteness of her face, her eyes dark and indecipherable as infinity.

She was the first to speak to him-to really speak to him, to say something that was not a demand, not an order, not spiky and vicious. She simply looked up to him, meeting his eyes with the darkness and intensity of her gaze and said in her sleepy, heavy voice-

"Are you completely alone?"

He was startled and only nodded, the pound of the alien hearts buried within him consuming and overwhelming.

"You can stay, if you would like. I was going to have some sake." And she held the bottle out to him and he sat across from her as she gravely unbuttoned her robe and hung it over the back of her chair, revealing the black shift she wore underneath and sitting, crossing her straight ankles. Her face, he decided, was stately and cultivated, her eyelids heavy and painted and her skin too flawless. Her hair looked inhuman, molten and solid rather than moveable. He wanted to touch it, just to see what it felt like.

They drank in silence until her tired lips parted once more, "What made you join?"

He thought and told her that he lost his heart. She smiled as if she had a secret. "What about you?" He asked, eyes flickering over the fortress of her face.

"I followed him," she said serenely, "And-" she paused and sipped her drink thoughtfully, "You'll find it again, in the end."

He liked her statements, her one-liners. She was poetic and profound at best, whimsical and unintelligible at worst. "We do not fall into bed with those we love best," she whispered after he had let her kiss him, her mouth tasteless and flighty, "Only those who we think can save us." He had taken to stroking her collarbone and remembering Aimi's white throat, and she to looking at him as though he was much more than a lover, perhaps as if he could save her, but she knew he could do nothing.

"You can never hide anything here," she whispered cryptically as the bottle slid from his fingers and he caught it in a cradle of thread before it smashed, "It's wasted." She thought she knew better than everyone, with her quiet voice and unlit eyes. He knew that somehow she did.

He asked her once, after it had fallen to the floor, where she got a fresh flower every day and she laughed into his ear, her hair solid and fluid at his cheek. She slid her slight body down his bulky one and picked up the blossom, holding it in front of his face for him to inspect. "It's fake, like everything else that stays young." And sure enough the petals were rough and immaculate and made out of stiff cloth. Kakuzu knocked it away, bringing his lips to her cheek, right side then left, coaxing colour into them.

She never told him to stop and never told him to begin. They fell into each other because they both had too much, too much to be ashamed of to think about, so with nothing in his mind he kissed her, the morbid bloom of her lips, the palisade of her throat, the bastion of her chest and the softness of her breasts. He knew the hardness of her taut stomach, the velvet touch of her cheek and the glaze of her eyes. He knew the coldness of her fingers and heart, the despair in her words. He did not know what she knew of him.

She never spoke of money to him, save once. "Your heart is not buried in gold," she had whispered as he emptied his change purse, "Lower your sights," and he had done nothing and only counted each coin painstakingly, over and over again until his vision blurred.

Making love to Konan was not like making love to a goddess. It was not like making love to a princess, a faerie, or an angel. It was like making love to a queen, a married queen, a queen who is not your own wife but a woman you fear and venerate, a woman you make love to in the dark, with the curtains closed lest her jealous husband should peer in the window. She did not make a sound, but he learned to relish the quickening of her breath, the slow heave of her breast, pressed against his rough chest, gasping for release. He learned to savor the arch of her back, the curl of her toes and the hiss of her teeth, clenched and tense. He became familiar with the unyielding clasp of her jaw, letting neither sigh nor sweet word escape her lips. Konan loved harshly and grudgingly, but above all silently. Kakuzu does not know how he loves, but he thinks it may be delicately, gently, as if she were still little Aimi and he still had his heart.

She was the one to walk into his room and find Kakuzu's first partner sprawled and bloody on the floor, the woman's face arranged into a mask of terror and her chest ripped open, delicate heart ripped into and displayed victoriously, grey blue lungs quivering in the chilled air, mottled with dark, thick blood. "Pein will not be pleased," was all Konan said and Kakuzu looked at her as if only just realizing her presence.

"I could have told you that," he answered roughly, hands still shaking with the thrill and anger. Konan smiled, a bitter twist to her lacquered lips. Kakuzu took her slender form into his arms, pulled her unmoving body against his own awakened, jittery one.

"You have no blood on your hands," She murmured and raised his hand, bringing his fingers to her lips, peeling back the gloves and tasting his skin. He laid his cheek to hers and waited until his hearts slowed, slowed enough for him to stop shaking. Blood was heavy on the air, the scent filled him, and overwhelmed him and he buried his face at the nape of her neck, breathing in her scent instead. She smelled like paper, anonymous and manufactured. Aimi's ashes crossed his mind, her ashes and her spring scented perfume, distinct and alive. Sometimes he wondered where Konan came from, whether or not she was even human. He never asked her.

Pein never met Kakuzu's eyes. He gave him directions, rinnegan glancing off around the room, fixating on everything but Kakuzu. Kakuzu nodded and they both pretended nothing was the matter, although they knew it was Konan.

Kakuzu learned to recognize Pein's scent, or the frenetic energy that surrounded Konan when she had been around him, the jerk of her slender fingers, the quickness of her heart and the twitch of her usually inanimate, lithe body. He can feel Pein, heavy on her skin, her mind, and her tongue. He is her God, Kakuzu knows. And she is irrevocably, unwearyingly in love with him.

He does not know how Pein feels, whether he is possessively and desperately in love with Konan, taking her as his goddess, as the only other being in his personal constellation and worshipping at her flimsy paper temple, or whether he is using her, his heart too full for love. He does not really care, because he will use her while she uses him, both of their bodies nothing but empty, selfish pawns.

(end)

She did not move when she saw him, and later on he realized it was because he was not wearing his Akatsuki cloak, only simple black, incongruous and divergent in the ice-slick forest. She was wearing a white cloak, and for the moment she looked untouched and pristine, cheeks and nose pink with cold and her dark eyes complacent and muted. Her lips looked distant, untouchable and foreign. She seemed like she would not move, like she was part of the forest. But that was only for a moment, because just before he made to back away silently she sprung to life, eyes flaring and voice loud and obtrusive in the placid woods.

"Wait!" Her voice was undeniably feminine, but hard and unfeeling at the same time. It was the voice of a girl who thought herself beautiful. Her hair, from what he could see under the hood was golden and nearly translucent when the sun caught it.

"What," he spoke tersely because he would _not_ let himself be taken by this apparition, this pure, selfish creature that had appeared to him as if by her whim.

"Who are you?" Her lips looked a little more inviting now, as they moved over her words, numb from the cold.

"No one," he murmured and she threw her hood back, a mass of blonde spilling over her slim shoulders. She was tiny, he had not noticed.

"Please, help me," Her proud voice sank a little and he only shook his head, a feeble gesture.

"I-I'm lost," she whispered, embarrassed, "It's-" she tried a quick, silvery laugh, "_fucking freezing._"

"I cannot help you," the cold was slowing his lips too, breaching the confines of his mask. His breath was turning into ice, cold and uncomfortable against the stiff fabric. "I'm sorry,"

"No, no its fine," She wrapped her arms around her slim frame and tossed her mane of hair. He imagined the body under the cloak to be angular and elegant.

"There's a…cabin east of here," he said quietly, voice stark in the snow, "Do you have money?"

She shook her head, and he shrugged, "Come on," she laughed, a shiver in her voice, "Can't you take any other form of payment?"

He considered, and nodded, a bitter, hidden smile twisting his lips. "What is your name?" He did not want to know where she was from, for it would only complicate matters. For all he knew she was a forgotten sylph, a spirit astray in the snow. She told him Ino, and followed him mutely, her body quivering with the cold. He wondered briefly, whimsically if there was anything else to her beneath the cloak, anything other than the rough, girlish voice and the mess of gold tumbling down her shoulders, her wide, dark eyes and pink cheeks.

He did not tell her his name; she did not ask. She followed him, her silence buzzing in his ears, charged and taunting. They moved slowly through the woods, each savouring what seemed like the moment before the storm, before whatever it was that was going to happen next.

He started a fire and she warmed her hands, slipping the robe down past her shoulders to reveal a sharp form, skinny arms and bony shoulders. Her neck was insubstantial and her hair covered her back. She was nothing to Kakuzu, he barely looked at her and rather tended to the fire, mulling over his next move which would require finding his way back to the Akatsuki's latest hideout to report his sightings and leaving this tempting girl behind. She had not spoken a word since her name and he wondered if he had maybe imagined her voice, constructed it in his mind as they walked through the snow.

"How will you find your way back?" His words rang out, hard in the empty air of the cabin, "Who have you lost?"

She shook her head and her lips curved into a smile, "My team," she said, "They'll find me, I don't have to worry." She laughed as if it wasn't her fault for getting lost, as if she was a child her team was supposed to be minding. He spared a glance at her smooth, sharp shoulders. She looked like a child.

"Can I leave?" He asked and she looked to him, eyes wide. They were violet-dark, dark violet, he noticed for the first time.

"I don't know who you are," she murmured and he stepped a little closer to her fragile cheeks, her flushed breath. "Thank you." Her words were a trap. He let his fingers glide over her shoulder.

"Not at all." He said, drawing his hand away. He did not tell her who he was.

He fled.

(finished)

"Here was a new card turned up! It is a fine thing, reader, to be lifted in a moment from indigence to wealth-a very fine thing; but not a matter one can comprehend or consequently enjoy, all at once. And then there are other chances in life far more thrilling and rapture giving: _this_ is solid, an affair of the actual world, nothing ideal about it: all its associations are solid and sober, and its manifestations are the same. One does not just, and spring, and shout hurrah! At hearing that one has got a fortune; one begins to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares and we contain ourselves and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow."

-_Jane Eyre_, Charlotte Brontë, pg. 338 (Wordsworth Classics)


End file.
